Java simple date format british time

Question

I am using simple date format to allow users to specify which time zone they are sending data in:

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,z");

This works fine: e.g.

df.parse("2009-05-16 11:07:41,GMT");

However, if someone is always sending time in London time (i.e. taking into account daylight savings), what would be the approriate time zone String to add? e.g. this doesnt work:

df.parse("2009-05-16 11:07:41,Western European Time");  
System.out.println(date);
Sat May 16 12:07:41 BST 2009

I want to match the time to british time taking into daylight savings.

Thanks.

Answer 1

In daylight saving time, it's BST. In the rest of the year it's GMT.

I suggest that you use the generic name (for the whole year), which is Europe/London. You can use something like this:

    String userInput = "2009-05-16 11:07:41,Europe/London";
    String[] tokens = userInput.split(",");

    SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
    df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone(tokens[1]));
    System.out.println(df.parse(tokens[0]));

The output in this case is:

Sat May 16 11:07:41 GMT+01:00 2009